Sorry, Jeb! Gov. Dan Malloy lauded for 'act of love' toward Syrian refugees despite 'security concerns'

Brett T. | 9:01 PM on April 04, 2016

Of all the Americans who assumed that Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush were “supposed” to be the two candidates to face off in the fall, no one was likely more sure of that inevitability than Clinton and Bush themselves, despite the fact that each candidate took advantage of at least one campaign “reboot.”

It wasn’t to be, though, as Bush was apparently born with his own foot in his mouth. While front-runner Donald Trump stepped off of that escalator and kicked the GOP race into high gear with his controversial statements on illegal immigrants, Jeb Bush instead declared that foreigners entering the country illegally weren’t committing a felony but rather “an act of love.” “I honestly think that is a different kind of crime,” he explained, before showing himself out of the 2016 race.

Too bad for Bush, then, that he’s 1) allegedly a Republican and 2) didn’t triple down on his statement: he could have been a contender for the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, which this year was awarded to Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy.

.@GovMalloyOffice a worthy choice for this year's #ProfileInCourage. Our politics must be driven by love, not fear. https://t.co/G4LZ1p1kcE

— VP Biden (Archived) (@VP44) April 4, 2016

“Our politics must be driven by love, not fear.” Where have we heard that before? That’s right, from President Obama, who ridiculed Republicans who wanted to more thoroughly screen and regulate the influx of Syrian refugees, calling them “scared of widows and 3-year-old orphans.”

Malloy, however, demonstrated his courage by “courageously defending the U.S. resettlement of Syrian refugees amid security concerns following the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris and personally welcoming a family of Syrian refugees to New Haven after they had been turned away by another state.”